the Rubicon - BY REQUEST - Rooted in Mission not Maintenance Part#1

The world needs the Church to roll up its sleeves and re-enter abandoned communities by Rob Perry

It is called “The Church,” which is what it once was. It still looks like a church, a brown brick building, with a church steeple, even a cross on top, but people don’t worship there. Around a decade ago the small congregation moved out, and the building was sold. Now it’s a trendy downtown club, home to a variety of local jazz and classical performers. Its name is a sad testament to what once was.

Two blocks away, at the top of another brick building with a steeple, is a large sign. Spanning the width of the church, written in chipped blue paint, it reads “Salvation Army Citadel.” This church moved in around 1904, and moved out in the 1980s. It’s an apartment building. The sign remains as a faded reminder of the past.

Less than a block up the road are two impressive works of architecture that stand almost side-by-side. These church buildings exist as a remembrance of what were, a century earlier, two of the most influential denominations in the east part of downtown. In fact, people still do worship at both. In the past number of decades as other Christian denominations were on their way out, these massive church buildings acted as anchors. Even though they have little or nothing to do with their environment, they remain; large buildings, tiny congregations, locked doors. Monuments.

The saddest part of the situation is that, as when they were first constructed, these buildings stand in some of the neediest areas of their city. Gangs, crack prostitutes, poor families and homeless addicts pass by their doors every day, and sleep in their stairwells every night. Social problems still remain. In fact, they have increased, but God’s people have left.

The prophet Ezekiel says, “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD” (Ezekiel 22:30-31). In a very real sense, it is the Church’s responsibility to “stand in the gap” on behalf of our communities. But, unfortunately, for neighbourhoods across North America, the on-site intercessors are gone. One morning, the community woke up, and its prophets, evangelists and priests had disappeared. In a twinkling of an eye, the neighbourhood was abandoned. There was no one to stand in the gap anymore, because the intercessors had moved to the suburbs.

It is the Church’s responsibility to “stand in the gap” on behalf of our communities

You can almost read the congregations’ stories in the bricks on the church walls. Around 80 or 100 years ago, new churches formed mostly around immigrant populations that inhabited the community. The churches were the most important landmarks in the neighbourhood. Everyone was affiliated with one or the other, whether they attended on Sundays or not. The children attended the Sunday Schools. When they became teenagers, many stopped going, only to find themselves back in times of crisis or when they were a little older, sending their own children to Sunday school. In communities filled with poverty and crisis, the churches were the safe places, the houses of refuge, the sanctuaries.

In many cases, small congregations inhabited these buildings, meeting faithfully week after week, year after year. But generations passed, children grew up and had children; they got better jobs, and moved into “nicer” areas of town. Their children in turn grew, got degrees and careers, and with them, families, larger incomes, bigger houses and fancier cars. With every succeeding generation, love for the community diminished. Churches lost their mission focus, and as their children became adults, the thought of remaining in the neighbourhood as a witness of hope, was not a consideration. The church was no longer their sanctuary. Those who still attended commuted. Gradually, the churches stopped owning responsibility for their communities and began focusing on insular details such as sermons, traditions, rivalries and maintaining programs that had been running since the church’s inception. At some point, the desire to maintain defeated the impulse for mission. Inevitably, eventually the church itself “graduated” to the suburbs, where its members lived. All that was left in the urban centre was a monument; a reminder of what was once the gathering place for a community.

That is the past; the question for the present is how the Church can regain its lost sense of mission? After decades, and even centuries of maintenance focus at the expense of our communities, how do we turn our hearts and minds towards mission again?

One of the most succinct descriptions of mission in the Bible is found in Jeremiah 1:17: “But the LORD said… ‘You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you… ’” It is a very simple, yet profound command, with massive implications: Wherever God sends us, we go; whatever he tells us to say or do, we do. Mission encapsulates not only the far corners of the earth, but also our own cities and communities.

Upon receiving God’s call, Jeremiah’s natural inclination was to look inwards: He said, “Ah Sovereign LORD, I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” Astounded by the awesome task set before him, Jeremiah was forced to face his own inadequacies. Today, in order for the Church of Christ to regain a vision for mission, we need to examine ourselves as Jeremiah did.

In order for the Church of Christ to regain a vision for mission, we need to examine ourselves as Jeremiah did

There are many motivations for mission, with love being the highest. What is mission after all, if not love for God expressed through service to the poor (see Matthew 25:31-46)? Let us examine a few things that keep us as people and congregations from attaining a missional existence. From there we will look at how to overcome these barriers, to move beyond maintenance, and achieve authentic mission.

Soren Kierkegaard specified three stages of human existence; reflecting a person’s attitude and motivation towards themselves and the world around them. The three spheres include the aesthetic sphere, the ethical sphere and the religious sphere: selfish motivation for pleasures, a strict adherence to rules and duty, and a higher calling towards God, respectively. Any group of Christians has believers who fit into one of these three stages (not everyone experiences each stage; neither is any stage exclusive of the others).

1) The Aesthetic Stage – Maintaining the Trivial
I say that I know life has gotten so boring so quickly in so many ways – and that neither of us planned for this to happen. I never thought that we would end up in the suburbs with lawnmowers and swing sets. I never thought that I’d be a lifer at some useless company. But then wasn’t this the way of the world? The way of adulthood, of maturity, of bringing up children? – Douglas Coupland from Life After God

What are we living for? What is most important to us? What drives us? According to Kierkegaard, the aesthetic sphere is the pursuit of pleasure. During this stage, self is the focus. Hedonism, materialism and other pursuits to do with personal gratification characterize this sphere. I believe that there are many people in our churches who have not graduated from this stage of development. When a believer sits in church week only for “personal blessing,” or when service to God is focused more on what “I get out of it” than on personal submission to the will of God, or when self-gratification is the benchmark of a religious experience, it is a safe bet that the believer is still living in the aesthetic sphere.

When we choose to avoid mission, our focus shifts elsewhere. And, when the most important thing in life is taken away, only trivialities remain. In the movie The Untouchables, the main character, Eliot Ness, faces the disparity between the urgent and the trivial. Eliot Ness is the leader of a group of incorruptible crime-fighters during the time of American prohibition. These “untouchables” had one goal: to bring Al Capone to justice. Towards the end of the movie we see Ness come face to face with life’s priorities. One of Ness’ men has just been murdered. The remaining three ‘untouchables’ are in hiding, hopelessly trying to figure out a new plan of action. Their case against Capone is in shambles, their comrade is dead and they are physically and emotionally drained. Just then Ness’s wife phones. There is silence in the room until his short conversation is over. After getting off the telephone, Ness turns to one of his partners and says, “She’s sitting in some room surrounded by people she doesn’t know going over kitchen colour charts or something.” And then he says with bewilderment: “Some part of the world still cares what colour the kitchen is.” To Ness, the colour of his kitchen walls was irrelevant.

Is it wrong to paint the kitchen? Of course not. However, when your life is mission focused, you gain a different perspective. Viewed in the light of a world filled with loneliness, disease and violence, does the colour of our kitchens really matter? What about the colour of the kitchen cupboards at church, or the carpet in the sanctuary, or the type of clothes the choir wears? Certainly these things need to be taken care of, but how many hours have we spent in committee meetings looking at colour charts while the battle rages outside our doors?

The Cure for Personal Aestheticism
The Jewish mystic Abraham Heschel once said, “We should not spend our life hunting for trivial satisfaction while God is waiting.” God is waiting. But where is he waiting? He waits for us to turn to him in prayer. He waits for us to seek him and fulfill the most important command, to “Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and all our minds. This is the first and greatest commandment.” However, we must not forget the second commandment, for “the second is like (the first); love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). And so, who are our neighbours? Christoph Blumhardt writes:

“Do we want to follow Jesus on this way? Then we must accept him in this company. Then the call comes to us to set to work wholeheartedly, for here is Jesus. He himself, speaking about the time of his absence, does not say, “I was rich and you respected me.” He says, “I was poor, I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was imprisoned, and you came to me, to the poor Saviour. You came to me, who sat as a guest at the table of the lowest men. There you came to me.” Here must be your whole heart; here you must do the deeds of faith; for it is from here that the power comes which will overthrow the world, the wretched, unhappy world.”

Every person is Christ for me and since there is only one Jesus, the person I am meeting is the only person in the world at that moment

Mother Teresa said, “I believe in person-to-person contact. Every person is Christ for me and since there is only one Jesus, the person I am meeting is the only person in the world at that moment.” When we enter into relationship with the outcast and unwanted in our society, this is reality. We are in the presence of the divine. We must not lessen this by demystifying it. It is mysterious, and strangely humbling. To love Jesus by serving others is the essence of mission. And, when we replace mission with trivialities, it is we who miss out.

Battling Corporate Aestheticism
Joy and perfect communion with God can only be found in mission. When we are serving sacrificially and completely, we become partners with Christ in his redemptive work. When we exist in the aesthetic sphere of Christian life, it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are fulfilling our destinies as followers of Christ, when we are only living to indulge our comfort zones and fulfill our selfish desires.

How much time have we spent debating what kind of music is to be played during worship? There are passionate Christians who will fight to defend their style of music. However, if we desire to recapture mission, we must enter into the “worship debate” only by examining our position through the lens of mission. Through a missional lens, the worship question is pragmatic: what kind of music will most effectively speak to the hearts of my church’s surrounding community?

We had to address this question when beginning a new church in urban, multi-cultural Toronto. In the neighbourhood surrounding the church, you will hear as many as 100 languages spoken. The residents of our community come from nearly every culture and tradition in the world. So, what music is right for this church?

On Sunday, we may sing songs in French, Mandarin, Spanish, Zulu and Russian. We use a “worship band” style including keyboards, guitars, bass, drums, and vocals – because it is the nearest we have to what most neighbourhood people listen to on the radio. As a mission-focused church, the principle here is that every congregational decision must be mission focused.

This principal carries over to other areas of church. For instance, our church meets on Sunday at 4:30 pm. Why? Because people in our neighbourhood like to sleep in on Sundays. Decisions are based on the needs of the community, not the desires of the believer.

Mission involves sacrifice and a focus on others. It means being not only comfortable, but joyful when people who look differently enter our churches

I am sure we know people in our congregation who may be mired in the aesthetic stage. Unfortunately, sometimes these people are pastors, or hold places of authority. However, until such people are ready to move on in maturity, mission is too high a calling. Mission involves sacrifice and a focus on others. It means being not only comfortable, but joyful when people who look differently enter our churches. Mission necessitates a passion and love for God’s fallen creation, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to be a transformative influence in the world. However, as long as we are content to live a self-absorbed hedonistic religion, our goal will be to ultimately maintain a church that makes us happy and comfortable.

Top photo: Timothy Samoff, Bottom photo: John McAlister

 

Writer: Rob Perry works with children and youth at 614 Regent Park, Toronto, Canada.

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